“Do you mind my looking at your paper?” I asked. “Certainly, sir, certainly,” said he most urbanely, handing it across. I glanced down its columns until my eye rested upon the list of the latest betting. “Hullo!” I said, “they are laying odds upon the favorite for the Cambridgeshire. But perhaps,” I added, looking up, “you are not interested in these matters?” “Snares, sir!” said he violently; “wiles of the enemy! Mortals are but given a few years to live; how can they squander them so? They have not even an eye to their poor worldly interests,” he added in a quieter tone, “or they would never back a single horse at such short odds with a field of thirty.” There was something in this speech of his which tickled me immensely. I suppose it was the odd way in which he blended religious intolerance with worldly wisdom. I laid the “Times” aside with the conviction that I should be able to spend the next two hours to better purpose than in its perusal. “You speak as if you understood the matter, at any rate,” I remarked. “Yes, sir,” he answered; “few men in England understood these things better in the old days before I changed my profession. But that is all over now.” “Changed your profession?” said I, interrogatively. “Yes; I changed my name, too.” “Indeed?” said I. “Yes; you see, a man wants a real fresh start when his eyes become opened, so he has a new deal all round, so to speak. Then he gets a fair chance.” There was a short pause here, as I seemed to be on delicate ground in touching on my companion’s antecedents, and he did not volunteer any information. I broke the silence by offering him a cheroot. “No, thanks,” said he; “I have given up tobacco. It was the hardest wrench of all, was that. It does me good to smell the whiff of your weed. Tell me,” he added suddenly, looking hard at me with his shrewd gray eyes, “why did you take stock of me so carefully before you spoke?” “It is a habit of mine,” said I. “I am a medical man, and observation is everything in my profession. I had no idea you were looking.” “I can see without looking,” he answered. “I thought you were a detective, at first; but I couldn’t recall your face at the time I knew the force.” “Were you a detective, then?” said I. “No,” he answered, with a laugh; “I was the other thing—the detected, you know. Old scores are wiped out now, and the law cannot touch me; so I don’t mind confessing to a gentleman like yourself what a scoundrel I have been in my time.” “We are none of us perfect,” said I. “No; but I was a real out-and-outer. A ‘fake,’ you know, to start with, and afterwards a ‘cracksman.’ It is easy to talk of these things now, for I’ve changed my spirit. It’s as if I was talking of some other man, you see.”